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I still have yet to see Watchmen. I really want to see it in the IMAX. Also, sad to see the big drop in it's 2nd weekend take. I understand that longer run times equate less showings thus less profits. An R rating, necessary for the material, will also hurt it's commercial success. The Dark Knight provided an intelligent take on the superhero film and Watchmen rides that notion but unfortunately for Watchmen the average person knows who Batman is and has no idea who Rorschach is. Are they willing to give it chance? Apparently not. Regardless, the film looks excellent and I think it will find more life on DVD.

Nice to see The Rock enjoying success but that movie does not look good. Looks alot different than the one I saw as a kid. But all these remakes seem to suck. Is there no creativity left? No original ideas? Sometimes, it seems so.

Sad to hear about this as well. Fans have been waiting for the Watchmen forever and now it is not doing well. It does not bode well for future productions of movies like this.

I thought I Love You, Man would take the top spot but Nic Cage still gets it done. Knowing does look good though. Looks like I have to see both now. I said it before, it's sad to see Watchmen slipping away.

Strength of the opening far surpassed expectations, and bolsters Miley Cyrus' star status. It's the biggest April bow in Disney history, while it's Friday gross--$17.3 million--is the best opening day showing in history for a G-rated pic.

Nearly all of Hollywood had expected Universal holdover "Fast & Furious" to win the weekend, based on its $71 million debut the week before.

Going into the weekend, Disney had hoped "Hannah Montana" would perform in the same range as 2003's "The Lizzie McGuire Movie," a vehicle for Disney Channel star Hilary Duff. "Lizzie" opened to $17.3 million in 2003, and ended its domestic run with $42.7 million.

DISNEY SURPRISED

On Sunday, the studio denied that it had deliberately set a low target. "It caught us by surprise. No doubt about it," said Chuck Viane, the studio's president of domestic theatrical distribution. "Outside of Wow! what can you say?"

I told everyone Hannah would be at the top this weekend. I saw Dragonball this weekend, wasn't bad. Then again, I know nothing about the cartoon.

I'm surprised actually. I thought the Hannah thing was over with. Shows what I know. I was curious about Dragonball just because I thought the lead guy was cute. That's not enough to get me off my butt into the theater though.

I'm surprised actually. I thought the Hannah thing was over with. Shows what I know. I was curious about Dragonball just because I thought the lead guy was cute. That's not enough to get me off my butt into the theater though.

People underestimate Miley Cyrus drawing power, the failure of the Jonas Bros movie showed that its not all cookie cutter success.

And I can guarantee that the upcoming Wizards of Waverly Place movie will not do near the business the Hannah Montana movie is.

When we went to see the HM Movie today there were people of all ages, we saw some teenage guys by themselves, as well as people our age (25-30) without kids.

I am glad Hollywood got kicked in the nuts

"What she pulled off here, based on tracking, is amazing," Disney distribution president Chuck Viane said today. "It's a tribute to her and her fan base."

Drilling down into the numbers:

• A regular, old 2D comedy, Hannah Montana: The Movie took in more in its Friday-Sunday debut than last year's Hannah Montana concert movie—or February's Jonas Brothers concert movie—did at 3D prices.

• Though the consensus pick to finish No. 1, second-place Fast & Furious didn't so much underperform as Hannah Montana overperformed. The car movie held okay, collecting another $28.8 million and bringing its two-weekend haul to a hefty $118 million.

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I told everyone Hannah would be at the top this weekend. I saw Dragonball this weekend, wasn't bad. Then again, I know nothing about the cartoon.

I knew Hannah would do well. After all, she is a phenomenon right now. Besides critics are giving good reviews to the film. Plus the movie is a good family movie. So naturally parents would take them to see it. Most kids seen Monsters Vs. Aliens. So it's a natural choice.

I still wouldn't mind seeing Dragonball. I know what it's about. And the series is not one of my favorites. One of the few thinks I hate about Animes like it that it takes about 10 episodes to finish a fight sequence. I'm still curious about the Live Action Cowboy Bebop movie starring Keanu Reeves. Also I'm surprised they have thought about making Inuyasha into a live movie too!

"I mark the hours every one, Nor have I yet outrun the Sun. My use & value unto you, are gauged by what you have to do."Enscribed onto Hermione Granger's Time Turner from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

I'm surprised that people are surprised that she opened big. HM is so incredibly successful, and that IMAX concert thing (or whatever it was) was ridiculously big last year.

That was why they were skeptical, there were a lot of people in hollywood (execs in particular) that said the only reason HM The Concert Tour made as much as it did was due to $12-15 ticket prices and that Miley could not carry a full blown movie.

I knew Hannah would do well. After all, she is a phenomenon right now

She was a phenom two years ago, since the concert tour (what was considered her peak) she has had one solo album, a top 10 song (The Climb) and a successful voice role in the $100m Bolt animated movie.

Also HM has now been on the air for almost 4 years, the typical teen phenom usually only lasts 2-3 if not less before they flame out or dwindle. Nick for example has tried to promote Miranda Cosgrove and Disney had started promoting Selena Gomez and Demi Lavato because they expected Miley would have lost popularity but that turns out to not be true as HM ratings are up for another year over previous.

Miley and her dad were smart because about 2 years ago they started to separate the two identities (just like the show) and so now as the HM specific audience grows up they are fans of Miley herself and do not necessarily need the HM moniker to follow her career, but it helps.

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Wolverine has the best opening of the year so far. I don't think it will have quite the legs of Iron Man, though.

Marking a howling start for the summer box office, 20th Century Fox’s “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” grossed $87 million from 4,099 runs at the domestic box office.
That’s the second-best opening of the four “X-Men” movies after “X2: X-Men United,” which had the advantage in opening over Memorial Day in 2003. “X2” grossed $102.1 million for the four-day holiday weekend.

“Wolverine’s” impressive bow came despite a working copy of the movie being pirated a month before the film’s opening. Studio isn’t sure how much the piracy ate into the box office, but some insiders suggest it could be as much as $20 million.

The Fox-Marvel prequel is the widest opening in Fox’s history.

Warner Bros. and New Line’s “Ghosts of Girlfriends Past,” offering an alternative for women, opened to $15.3 million from 3,175 runs to land at No. 2 after “Wolverine.”

"Wolverine" dropped only 15% from Friday to Saturday. Many had thought the pic will drop more, since fanboy-driven movies often see significant declines.

“Ghosts” performed in line with last year’s “Made of Honor,” which opened to $14.8 million on the same weekend a year ago.

That’s also the same weekend that Paramount’s “Iron Man” bowed. “Iron Man” opened to $102 million.

Star Trek made in its first weekend what most of the previous trek movies made in their entire RUN... Amazing. By next weekend I'm sure it will have surpassed the two top earning trek movies and then fly past them.

SO here is something I've always wondered. How can we have the numbers already is today isn't even done?! I mean... is this like a time travel thing or? lol

SO here is something I've always wondered. How can we have the numbers already is today isn't even done?! I mean... is this like a time travel thing or? lol

The estimates are usually pretty close to the actuals that come out on Monday. I usually get the numbers from EDI's website and they seem to be the same numbers that all the other websites report.

Here is an article from slate.com that explains it pretty good:

How do Hollywood box-office estimates work?
By Gabriel Snyder
If you watched CNN or MSNBC last Monday, or visited any number of Web sites that carry box-office data, you probably already know that The Chronicles of Narnia finally managed to edge past King Kong over the New Year's weekend, $32.8 million to $31.6 million.

But as Mickey Kaus recently observed, sites like Variety.com and BoxOfficeMojo.com, as well as wire services like AP and Reuters, seem to be engaged in some crystal-ball-gazing when they announce "estimates" for weekend grosses before the weekend is over. What are these numbers, and how are they obtained?

These box-office "results" released over the weekend are simply a studio's own estimate of its movie's weekend performance. Distribution executives arise at dawn on Sunday mornings to crunch their numbers and report them to the media. Until recently, I was the Daily Variety reporter who collected box-office grosses; at 8 a.m., my phone started ringing with executives handing over the numbers, along with a healthy dose of spin. Making a weekend projection on a Sunday morning is quite similar to how the media call political elections when they have the results of only a handful of precincts: You compare the numbers you have against some past results to make an educated guess.

The numbers the studios have, but don't release to the public, come from one of two box-office tracking firms, Rentrak and Nielsen EDI's Flash service. These services get sales results directly from theaters and place them on a secure Web site; only a select number of studio executives have access to this enormous information database. Here, for instance, they can compare King Kong's matinee grosses at AMC's Times Square theater with what The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King did there its first afternoon.

Every studio has its own intricate formulas for divining weekend estimates. Here's a simplified, hypothetical example: Let's say you're 20th Century Fox and you're trying to figure out the early estimate for the opening weekend for Star Wars: Episode III—Revenge of the Sith. The last two Star Wars movies were released on the same weekends in previous years—the week before Memorial Day. On the first film, The Phantom Menace, Sunday grosses were down only 10 percent from Saturday. On the second, Attack of the Clones, the Saturday-to-Sunday drop was 22 percent. If you're coming up with a Sith estimate, you would by Sunday morning have a good handle on Saturday grosses, so all you have to do is guess how much Sunday will drop. If you split the difference on the last two films, you end up with 16 percent, which is basically how Sith performed—Fox issued a Sunday estimate of $158.4 million for Sith's first four days.

Once the studios see the box-office grosses from all the Sunday shows, they issue revised, more informed estimates to the media on Monday, which are known as the "actuals." Fox's "actual" box-office report for Revenge of the Sith was not far off-base: $158.5 million.

Since Rentrak and EDI are collecting actual box-office numbers from the theaters, why go through the trouble of making estimates at all? Why not just release the real data? The problem, as the studios see it, is that the private numbers only reflect grosses from approximately 90 percent of the theaters in North America (in Hollywood, North America is only the United States and Canada). The "actual" estimates the studios issue include a guess at how much business they're doing in those other theaters. This "missing factor" affords studios some wiggle room to secure a box-office record, or to say that the sequel beat the opening of the original. Generally such tweaking remains a Hollywood secret, though; executives tempted to complain know too well that one day they may want to do the same thing.

As was the case with Revenge of the Sith, studios' weekend estimates are typically closely aligned with actuals released on Monday. But there have been situations where weekend projections are wildly off course. Maybe a bad storm hurt business on Sunday night. Or the studio underestimated the millions watching a big World Series game or the Oscars. In 2004, for example, Christmas Eve, typically a low-grossing day at theaters, fell on a Friday, which is ordinarily a high-grossing day. This wreaked havoc on the studio estimates. Universal's estimate of $44.7 million for Meet the Fockers was $2.5 million too low, while Fox's $12.7 million estimate for Fat Albert was $2.7 million too high. While Fockers maintained its first place box-office position, the optimistic estimate for Fat Albert meant it slipped into third place behind Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events.

Though rare, sometimes studios jockey for position on the box-office chart. The last great Sunday-morning battle was in the summer of 2002 when 20th Century Fox's Minority Report opened against Walt Disney's Lilo & Stitch. Looking at the same data, both studios were sure they had cinched the top spot. In the end, Fox eventually claimed the day, when their actuals showed that Minority Report's $35.7 million opening had squeezed past Lilo's $35.3 million.

Although there is always room for chicanery, there are two factors keeping studios honest. First, some Hollywood players now have movie contracts that tie payments to how well their film performs at the box office. Frequently, the contract specifies that the benchmark will be the studio estimate printed in Variety, so it's in the studios' best interest to not overreport.

Studios may also be fearful of attracting attention from the SEC in the post-Enron era. While box-office numbers won't make a dent in the bottom lines of the media conglomerates that own the Hollywood studios, they are still an announcement of financial results. And no Hollywood exec wants to find himself cuffed for padding the box-office results of The Chronicles of Narnia.